Graduation

Earlier this summer I spotted a boy toddler bike at a garage sale and asked about the price.  She looked at me and shrugged and said, "Two bucks?"

While the plan was to let Eli use Myka's turquoise toddler bike when she learned to ride her (also garage sale find) big girl bike, I couldn't pass up such a bargain.  We just needed to get Myka going on her big bike so we could put her training wheels on Eli's new bike.  Unfortunately, the weather, time, and lack of interest got in the way of that plan.  A few weeks went by and I finally just moved the training wheels to Eli's bike so he could ride it once in awhile.  Myka then resorted to walking, dribbling a soccer ball, or riding her scooter when we would take walks together.  She really didn't want to ride that two wheeler.

A few weeks ago we were all home and I mentioned to Kurt that we should work on  it again.  We took her to the perfect spot... a grassy basin that had about a ten foot hill and then 100 yards of wide open grass.  We started her at the top and let her ride down the hill over and over until she could pedal and keep the bike going once she got to the flat part.  It worked like a charm and in about 15 minutes she could ride half way across the field.  We moved to the sidewalk and worked on starting and stopping, then headed on our path around the pond.  Kurt walked/jogged with her while she rode, usually going about 10-20 yards before she would stop and try to start again.  The next evening we went back out and Kurt ran around the pond with her about 4 times.  I don't think he's run that far since he was 20.  The next day he followed her on his bike just to keep up, and the rest is history.